The Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, has lamented the dearth of CNG filling stations across the country and asked the Federal Government to establish such stations if it means business about encouraging CNG as alternative energy source.
President of the NLC, Joe Ajaero, who led the union’s leaders to Yola on Friday to commission CNG buses meant for the North East, also challenged the Adamawa State Government to take advantage of the abundant sun in the state to establish solar power in response to the failure of the national power grid.
The NLC president who spoke during the official commissioning of 10 CNG busses for the North East Zone, said the buses are the North East’s share of the 90 CNG buses that the union obtained from the Federal Government.
Ajaero who said he felt bad that only 10 buses would go to the North East even as the 10 is hardly sufficient for Adamawa State alone, said he expected a lot more from the Federal Government but what is available had to be shared while more are expected.
“We are giving these few that we have to tell the Federal Government that we will always do our part,” he said, stressing that even the few will be difficult to handle because there are no CNG filling stations across the states of the country.
“As we are commissioning these buses today here, just like in other places, there are no CNG filling stations. The essence of CNG buses will be defeated if there no facilities to obtain the CNG,” the NLC president said.
Explaining that the buses came with provision of three months of free PMS supply, Ajaero said use of the buses will come to an end if there are no CNG facilities.
“We plead that within the next three months, there should be CNG filling stations and other infrastructure like conversion kits all over the country,” he said.
Commenting on the sunny nature of Adamawa State, the NLC president advised the state government to invest on solar energy infrastructure as a viable alternative to faltering power supply from the national grid.
“You have sun in abundance, so you can have power that is your own, power that nobody can switch off unless they can switch off the sun,” he told the state government.
NLC demands CNG filling stations across Nigeria
